The Oklahoma football veteran is the third member of the jury(Robert Voets / CBS)

Almost everyone who plays Survivor gets voted out sooner or later — but in the case of Oklahoma football veteran Chris Hammons, it was Boomer, then sooner.

Botched football jokes aside, Chris suffered a massive blindside at the midpoint of the double-sized Thanksgiving week edition of Survivor, thanks at least in part to his fellow Oklahoman, Zeke Smith. The mustached Millennial joined forces with David Wright and his “trust cluster” to vote for Chris, the first shot fired in what Zeke described as the “Gen X Civil War.” As the next hour proved, it was actually the last shot fired before Zeke and David started targeting each other, but that’s a story for another time.

For now, we focus on Chris, an actually massive presence during his time on the season, with a physical frame that made his Millennial rivals look like literal children. During our exit interview this morning, the erstwhile Hulk of Fiji opened up about getting blindsided by Zeke, his reasons for butting heads with Jessica Lewis, his turbulent relationship with David, and more.

Wigler: Hey, Chris. How was Thanksgiving?

Chris: It was good, aside from the obvious! (Laughs.)

Wigler: Did that dampen the mood? Or can nothing take away from a true Hammons Thanksgiving?

Chris: Well we were in Walt Disney World, so that helped. Getting up and going to the Magic Kingdom made everything okay.

Wigler: Let’s talk about the vote. You were 100% sure where the vote was headed — so either you completely knew this was coming, or it was a total blindside. I’m assuming it’s the latter.

Chris: Yeah, this was a total blindside. I thought for sure I had Zeke and Hannah in my court. It didn’t matter what Dave did; this was going to go down. And I was wrong.

Wigler: What went into that confidence?

Chris: I felt Zeke had Hannah in his pocket in that moment. For sure, at that point in time, she was going to do what Zeke wanted. And I saved Zeke. He owed me his life in the game. He was a Sooners fan and he watched me play football. We were tight. That’s something the edit doesn’t show; it can’t show you everything. But Zeke and I were tight. I felt like he was going to go with me and we would have the majority and Jess would go home.

Wigler: How quickly did you realize what happened? Did you know it was Zeke who turned on you? Was that part of the Boomer-Sooner shoutout?

Chris: The Boomer-Sooner was planned by Zeke and I. We said that no matter who backstabs who, if we go out, one is going to give a shoutout to the Sooner nation, and the other has to respond. I was probably halfway down the ramp going, “Who did this?” I was running the numbers and finally it hit me that it was Zeke. I was halfway down the ramp before it hit you like a ton of bricks.

Wigler: And how did that feel? Like you said, you brought Zeke back to life in this game, and you had this connection over Oklahoma football. Was it a hard betrayal to sit with?

Chris: It was. Honestly, it affected me more than I thought. I thought I could handle it if I was taken out or whatever. But it stung. It hurt. It hurt my feelings for once. I was very, very angry. I really was. I was livid at the time.

Wigler: When you get angry in this game, sometimes you threaten physical violence, so kudos to you for not actually squeezing David’s head off in this Tribal Council. Very mature of you.

Chris: Yes, very mature of me to not kill David. (Laughs.) You know, David and I were a lot closer on the show than it showed. Dave and I were looking at arm’s length. We knew one of us was going to come after the other at some point. I expected it from Dave, but not Zeke.

Wigler: Talk me through your relationship with David, especially after the swap. How hard was it to rebuild trust after the early days of Gen X?

Chris: It was, but at first, my first thought — and it was probably my biggest mistake in the game — was to take David out right then at the swap. I probably should have, but hindsight is 20/20. Once Dave and I made the CeCe vote, our little Vanua tribe of me, Zeke, Michelle and Dave made a little run there. I thought we were pretty tight. But I knew it was going to come down to trying to take Dave out at some point. I was trying to eliminate his two-way street by taking Jess out.

Wigler: Why couldn’t Gen X keep it together? Why was this civil war between you and Jess inevitable, when Gen X had numbers over the Millennials? What’s your side of how it played out?

Chris: My side of it is I trusted many of the Millennials way more than I trusted Jess. I thought Jess ruined our trust when she blindsided Paul. We were all tight. We had this big alliance going into the merge. So when she did that, I think she busted up any trust I could have with her. More so than that, she was tight with too many people. She was tight with David, Ken and Adam. If I could knock her out, then those three would flounder around and have to cling to my alliance.

Wigler: With that in mind, with your idea to take someone out at the hub of an alliance in order to free up some players, do you see the logic in why Zeke and David voted for you? Did they make a good move in targeting you when they did?

Chris: I think if they don’t get me out right then, there’s a likely chance I would have went to the end, or would have been very deep in the game. It was a great move. Dave was brilliant. That was a brilliant move. Getting me out at that moment was the right move. If they don’t, I drag a couple of goats to the end with me, and I possibly win the whole thing.

Wigler: What’s your ideal Final Three in that scenario?

Chris: At the time, I thought Hannah and Sunday, or Adam at the time. But as you go through, everything changes on a daily basis. At the time I got blindsided, those were my probably top three.

Wigler: You and Bret were friends out there. What bonded you two together?

Chris: From day one, minute one, Bret and I were thrown over there. Ken says: “I’m from the jungle, you all build the shelter!” And he goes off looking for coconuts or throwing a machete or whatever he’s doing, and Bret and I are left to build this shelter. It gets knocked down by the storms and we build it again. I remember bonding with him. He’s a hard working guy. He’s a man’s man. We clicked over that.

Wigler: Flip side, what about Ken? Why didn’t he get along with the rest of Gen X?

Chris: Ken’s an enigma. He’s a puzzle to me. He’s a super, super nice guy. Maybe that’s what throws people off, is that he’s so nice. But sometimes he’s maybe not aware of what he’s droning on about: the moonlight, the lavender around his shower, that kind of stuff…

Wigler: The lavender around his shower? What does that mean?

Chris: I don’t know. There’s like purple lavender around his shower in Hawaii, or something. There was lots of poetic talk. Sometimes people were like, “What is he talking about?” But Ken’s a super nice guy at the same time, and he’s this massive, ripped-up guy, good-looking. Maybe that combination didn’t work at the time, but he’s just too nice a guy not to like him.

Wigler: Speaking of human specimens, and not to get weird here, but you’re a huge guy. They called you the Hulk out there. You made the Millennials look like children. You were a challenge asset in a very serious way, but it also made you stand out. Was your size an asset or a liability, ultimately?

Chris: I think it turned out to be a liability in the end. But I knew that going in. I knew that post-merge, I would be a target. Maybe that’s my big mistake. Post-merge, I moved too quickly. I was holding it back all the way and trying not to be the leader. That’s why Paul was so important to me. He could be that leader, and I could just step back, Bret and I. But it’s a liability at the end of the game. People look at you and see me do some of those things and go, “Well, maybe the next three challenges aren’t balance routines, and his feet are on the ground and he wins every one of them.” It’s definitely a liability in the end of the game.

Wigler: You’re the third member of the jury. Where was your head at in terms of how best to serve as a Survivor juror? Were you prepared to award the best player, or were you still nursing grudges from getting voted out of the game?

Chris: I certainly had grudges, but I was willing to put that aside. Our champion was very important to me. I didn’t want it to be somebody who wasn’t worthy. I wasn’t going to do that. No matter who it was at the end, I was going to choose who I felt played the game the best, regardless of my personal feelings.

Wigler: Before the game, you told me that your kids didn’t know you were going out to play Survivor. What was their reaction when they finally found out?

Chris: They were so excited. They told everybody in like five seconds. (Laughs.) Everyone we walk up to: their teachers, their friends… they’re just like, “My dad’s on Survivor!” Every second. It was really fun for them. They got a huge kick out of this. Still are.

Wigler: And how about you? You were a huge fan of the show before you played. Did it live up to your expectations?

Chris: It exceeded every expectation. Everybody has visions of winning the whole thing, but I have no complaints. It was so exciting for me, my law firm, my family, my friends. Oklahoma, the whole state, has been great. They pulled behind me. It’s been incredible.

Wigler: And on that note, one final question. How did you and Zeke figure out the Boomer-Sooner connection?

Chris: At some point in time, he knows I’m from Oklahoma, my size, everything… some way or another, he asked me if I played. I said, “Yes, I played.” He knew the national champion stuff, so he went nuts when he remembered me. I don’t know if he remembered me or not, but he acted like he did. I was a captain on the 2000 championship team, so he was going nuts about that.

Josh Wigler is a writer, editor and podcaster who has been published by MTV News, New York Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Comic Book Resources and more. He is the co-author ofThe Evolution of Strategy: 30 Seasons of Survivor, an audiobook chronicling the reality TV show’s transformation, and one of the hosts of Post Show Recaps, a podcast about film and television. Follow Josh on Twitter @roundhoward.